DFO Oceanography: Dr. Fraser Davidson — Counting on the Currents

A brightly coloured map of the world glows from a computer monitor. It looks like a painting with bright, coloured points scattered across the oceans from one side of the earth to the other. There are 3,800 dots across the map of the world, which represent drifters, free-drifting oceanographic devices that collect data from the ocean. These drifters measure the temperature and the amount of dissolved salt in the water (water salinity), and the readings are picked up by satellites as they ...